Hardcopy prints typically provide ancillary data to supply additional information for an area of interest and can enhance the analysis of key data in the print. Postcards, for example, provide a unique form of ancillary data. On the back of a postcard image, ancillary data information such as stamps, user notes, dates, addresses, and other types of annotation can be found. This data typically provides additional information to a reader of the postcard. Other types of ancillary data include size, shape, and texture (i.e., Histogram) information, information from the back of the print such as watermarks, manufacturer marks, photofinisher marks and consumer marks. In addition, ancillary data can be in a variety of formats, such as audio, video and the like.
Ancillary data can be scanned and compressed using standard JPEG compression. Embedding this compressed ancillary data into a JPEG file offers many practical uses. For example, still images or pictures may be transmitted over the Internet with an accompanying audio file, which can be a person's voice describing the picture. This allows families to share pictures including a family member's voice.
Currently, techniques exist for associating ancillary data with JPEG files. For example, users wishing to create digital images with sound can attach a separate audio file to their image file, e.g., .mp3. However, .mp3 files break down often in that they are easily corrupted or detached during transmission and storage. Another problem with .mp3 files is that they require special software to be saved and used, such as Microsoft Media® software.
Scanned prints are a unique type of image and ancillary data. A scanned print contains both an image and non-image side. Typically when prints are scanned, only the image side is scanned and saved as a digital file. However, many times the non-image side contains information that can be valuable to the viewing experience. The non-image side can contain manufacturer marks in the form of a watermark that can be used to identify the year(s) the photo was printed. This date information can be meaningful in the creation of multimedia presentations, scrapbooks, photobooks, etc. Older prints may contain consumer marks in the form of handwritten notes, names of people in the photo, the location of the photo, or other relevant facts. Often the photofinisher places a stamp or mark on the non-image side of the print to identify the date the photo was processed and printed.
The non-image side of a print is typically very uniform except for the previously mentioned markings. This allows the non-image side to be highly compressed resulting in a very small JPEG file. However, this action creates a non-image side JPEG file for the image, which typically needs to be associated with the image side file. This is not a desired situation as the files can easily be separated.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,032,918, issued to Ota et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,201, issued to Hashimoto et al., discloses audio and image files that are recorded separately and associated with each other. One of the disadvantages with the invention disclosed in Ota et al. is the necessity of maintaining two separate files. This can be very burdensome and vulnerable to loss of association, especially when high volumes of files are involved or when files are archived for long periods of time. U.S. Pat. No. 6,915,012, issued to Osborne, et al., explains how to embed non-JPEG files into an EXIF header using standard marker extensions. However, Osborne does not provide an intuitive, user recognizable technique for readily indicating that non-image side ancillary data is stored in a JPEG EXIF header of an associated image file.